Books, Beverages, and Ideas

The Kalevala – The Beginning of Beer in the Finnish Epic Saga

The Kalevala is a curious creature that evades easy categorisation. At its most basic level it is a united, flowing, epic poem assembled in its final form in 1849 by Elias Lönnrot. Only 3% of the work is thought to be of his own invention, however. Taking a step back it is built on a collection of Finnish folk poetry that was originally penned sometime in the 1600s over a vast area of Finland. The poetry was originally performed in song and is consequently fairly rigid in form and meter (for any music or literature geeks – specifically the trochaic tetrameter).

These 17th century songs are not nearly the beginning of the material. They reflect much older oral traditions, which are evident in many of the themes the Kalevala expresses. The oldest deal with the creation of the Earth and are notoriously difficult to date, although some speculate a figure of about 3000 years ago.

Of particular fascination to me, is the amount of lyrics in the saga dedicated to beer. An interesting and frequently quoted figure, albeit overstated, is that nearly 400 lines in the Kalevala deal with beer, while but 200 deal with creation.

In the 13th poem we have the retelling of the origin of beer. This poem has proved an important but hotly contested source in trying to nail down the elusive place or time when hops began to be used in the brewing process. Based largely on the premise that the lore in the Kalevala come from much earlier oral traditions, some have proposed that the Scandinavians were the first to grow hops specifically for beer. [For more on this debate see Ian S. Hornsey, A History of Beer and Brewing, London: Royal Society of Chemistry, 2004. Pps. 303-14]

A much abbreviated synopsis of this poem is that preparations are underway for a major wedding at Pahjola, and Osmotar of Kalew, a female brewer, begins to make the beer for the celebration. She:

“Takes the golden grains of barley, Taking six of barley-kernels, Taking seven tips of hop-fruit, Filling seven cups with water, On the fire she sets the caldron, Boils the barley, hops, and water, Lets them steep, and seethe, and bubble Brewing thus the beer delicious, In the hottest days of summer, On the foggy promontory, On the island forest-covered; Poured it into birch-wood barrels, Into hogsheads made of oak-wood.”

Thus far so good, but the beer does not ferment. So growing troubled she queries, “What will bring the effervescence, Who will add the needed factor, That the beer may foam and sparkle, May ferment and be delightful?” Enlisting the help of Kalevatar, the magical maiden, they conjure creatures to fetch ingredients to ferment the beer. The first is a snow-white squirrel which is sent into the forests of the mountains to retrieve cones from a fir tree. Sadly, when they “Laid them in the beer for ferment, But it brought no effervescence, And the beer was cold and lifeless.”

The second creature, a golden-breasted marten, was sent on the unenviable mission of fetching foam from the mouths of bears in battle (presumed to contain yeast). The marten returns successful and unscathed, yet the foam “brought no effervescence, Did not make the liquor sparkle.” Finally a honey-bee is summoned and is instructed to fly to an island in the ocean, and to collect the sweetened juices from the flowering grass beside a sleeping maid. Upon the bees return, the pollen is added to the birch-wood barrels, and the fermentation takes off in earnest, overflowing the barrels and runs in streams into Pahjola.

Osmata is distraught, believing she has failed and that the wedding feast will be a failure. But the birds in the trees assure her that the beer is good, and so she barrels some more and the feast is a great success.

Thus, the Finnish origin of beer:

“Great indeed the reputation Of the ancient beer of Kalew, Said to make the feeble hardy, Famed to dry the tears of women, Famed to cheer the broken-hearted, Make the aged young and supple, Make the timid brave and mighty, Make the brave men ever braver, Fill the heart with joy and gladness, Fill the mind with wisdom-sayings, Fill the tongue with ancient legends, Only makes the fool more foolish."

And for Lord of the Rings fans – Tolkien stated that the Kalevala saga was one of his sources that inspired the Silmarillion. You’ll find that several characters and events in the book are readily identifiable in the epic.

I’ve looked around and haven’t found a Kalevala beer recipe. But looking at the rune, there may be some possibilities.

I’ll list my guesses at the actual recipe given in the Kaleva. Anyone, feel free to reply and correct my assumptions, since I haven’t done many searches in Suomeksi, and there may be more info that I haven’t found.

The portions, as stated, were:

6 of barley kernels (assumed to be sprouted)
7 tips of hop fruit (assumed to be flowers or buds)
7 cups of water

If one takes the “cups of water” to be the measuring standard, and assumes “tips” of hop fruit mean fractions of the measuring portion, then for every seven cups of water there is a given number of cups of hops and barley that need to be measured. These are:

1 cup of hops
6 cups of barley
7 cups of water

In fractions of cups of water this is:

1/7 cups of hops
6/7 cups of barley
7/7 (1) cups of water

This, in decimals of cups is:

0.86 cups of barley
0.14 cups of hops
1 cup of water

A Google search on “all grain beer recipes” pulled up some nice pages on some tasty sounding beers. (But that is besides the point.) The first recipe I looked at suggested:

about 10.5 lbs grains
about 2 oz hops (dried)
about 5 gal water

This, in cups, is:

about 12.8 cups of grain/malt
about 2.5 cups of hops
about 16 cups of water

(I assumed the dried hops are 1/10 the density of hop buds and that hop buds have the same density as water. I couldn’t find much density info on hops, dried or undried so this is an estimate based on a book I found in Google books listed as: Brewing: science and practice By Dennis E. Briggs, Chris A. Boulton, Peter A. Brookes, Roger Stevens)

If the portions in the modern all grain recipe are all divided by 16 cups, we get the portions of each ingredient for every cup of water. This is:

0.8 cups grain/malt
0.16 cups hops
1 cup water

From the Kalevala recipe the portions were:

0.86 cups barley
0.14 cups hops
1 cup water

This suggests that the ingredients were pretty close to an all grain batch we might make nowadays. It’s a little heavier on the grains, and a little lighter on the hops, but not too different.

Of course, I made some assumptions on the hops and grain weight, and the value of a “tip” of hop flowers. The grains may have been cracked in the modern recipe, I don’t remember. But if that was true, it would have an effect on the proportions. Also, the amount of hops may have been very different.

The idea of this was to see if it would be in the ballpark of something manageable. So far, so good.

As for the amount of other stuff that were brought by various animals, we get (not all of these were mentioned above, but are in the original rune):

cones from 3 fir trees brought by the squirrel
pine shoots from 3 magic pine trees brought by the squirrel
a maiden’ s fingerful of bear foam brought by the marten
a maiden’s fingerful of honey brought by the bee (after 8 days)

My best guess as to what these mean is that fir cones and pine shoots must come from three (3) trees. The amount added is not as important as the number of trees they were taken from, which, by the way, is three. No more, no less. And the number shall be three. Five is right out.

OK, all kidding aside. The story may bounce around a little. It first mentions the most improtant ingredients, then it uses the next few ingredients to tell about the fermentation process. If the “bear foam” represents the foam that is created during a hard boil, then the honey (I’d guess a cup, since that was the first concrete measuring amount mentioned in the story) is added after a good boil. Since it says the bee takes 4 days to reach the honey in the flowers next to a “copper belted silver clad sleeping maiden” and another 4 days to get back, I would guess that either the honey is added at the end of 8 days to sweeten the beer, or added during the boil just before adding to the fermentor and it takes 8 days to ferment to drinkability.

The order of the ingredients mentioned in the story may tell the portions of a “time” (pick an hour) when each ingredient is added.

Boil grains, hops and water together. After a while (15 min?), add the fir cones. After another while (15 min?) add pine shoots. Skim off the “bear foam”. Add the honey. Boil another 15 min. Cool and ferment. Wait 8 days to drink.

I did all the math for 1 gallon of water, instead of the 5 gallons in the modern recipe. I had the hops and grains amount close, but the water value was 1/5 the amount in a current recipe. So, maybe the Kalevala beer recipe is talking about making the wort of a larger portion of beer. If this is so, then there should be something else in the rune to suggest how much it should be diluted.

OK, here is the start of the beer portion of the rune as shown above (there are a few lines before that of how to kill a very VERY big ox, but that is for the BBQ pages.):

“Osmotar, the beer-preparer,
Brewer of the drink refreshing,
Takes the golden grains of barley,
Taking six of barley-kernels,
Taking seven tips of hop-fruit,
Filling seven cups with water,
On the fire she sets the caldron,
Boils the barley, hops, and water,
Lets them steep, and seethe, and bubble
Brewing thus the beer delicious,
In the hottest days of summer,
On the foggy promontory,
On the island forest-covered;
Poured it into birch-wood barrels,
Into hogsheads made of oak-wood.”

From a volumetric standpoint, first is mentioned a caldron, then a barrel, then a hogshead.

A barrel is 31 US gallons.
A hogshead is 63 US gallons.
A caldron is a big pot with over 2 gallons of capacity. (I couldn’t find a specific volume for a caldron (cauldron)).

So, if the smallest vessel is supposed to be the cauldron, then that is less than a barrel, which is less than 31 US gallons. If the wort for a 5 gallon batch of beer was poured into a BARREL filled to the brim with water, then it would be about 6 times as dilute as a regular 5 gal batch. This seems too dilute. So the same thinking about a HOGSHEAD would be way too weak for a beer.

If a cauldron is between 2 to 10 US gallons in capacity, then the Kalevala beer was somewhere between 1/2 to 2 times as strong as current standard beers. That would put it in the range of 2.5% to 10% alcohol by volume. That seems reasonable.